Natalie Mendoza (born August 13, 1978) is an Australian actress and singer, born in Hong Kong of Filipino parentage, and raised in Sydney, Australia.
She starred on stage in “Les Miserables” and “Miss Saigon”. Mendoza appeared in Moulin Rouge! alongside Nicole Kidman where she sung “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” and “Material Girl”. She currently appears in the TV-Series Hotel Babylon.
One of our readers asked why we have never featured Maggie Cheung. She is one of Asia’s most beautiful women according to some. So here we go at last:
Maggie Cheung Man-yuk (born September 20, 1964) is a multi award-winning Chinese actress from Hong Kong. Raised in England, she has over 80 films to her credit since starting her career in 1983.Biography
Maggie Cheung traces her ancestry to Shanghai, China, and then fled from the Communists when the concession was returned to the Communists and moved to Hong Kong a couple of generations ago. Subsequently, her family, merchant-class, emigrated from the Crown Colony of Hong Kong to the United Kingdom. Maggie Cheung spent part of her childhood and adolescence in the United Kingdom. Upon her return to Hong Kong in 1983, at the age of 19 Cheung entered the Miss Hong Kong beauty pageant contest. She won second place. She was a semi-finalist in the Miss World pageant the same year.
Prior to 1988, Maggie’s screen appearance was often limited to eye candy roles. One of Cheung’s notable movie roles then is that of “May”, the girlfriend of police detective “Kevin” Chan Ka Kui in Jackie Chan’s Police Story movies (however, she did not reprise the role in Police Story 4: First Strike or New Police Story). Maggie frequently cited her performance in the movie As Tears Go By (1988), her first of many collaborations with film director Wong Kar-Wai, as the piece that truly began her serious acting career. Maggie Cheung is famous for being a talented multi-lingual actress. In Centre Stage, she performed in Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese fluently, switching languages with ease. In Clean, she performed in fluent British-accented English, Parisian French, Cantonese and a smattering of Mandarin. Unlike most traditional actors in Hong Kong who are Cantonese monolingual, she is a polyglot as a result of her cosmopolitan upbringing.
Audiences outside Asia have become increasingly familiar with her work, including her roles in Centre Stage (as Ruan Lingyu), In the Mood for Love, Irma Vep, 2046, Hero, and, most recently, Clean.
She married French director Olivier Assayas in 1998 but divorced him in 2001. Their relationship remained amicable, however, as in 2004 Cheung made her award-winning movie Clean with him. As part of her portrayal of the drug-addicted aspiring singer Emily Wang in Clean, Maggie Cheung performed songs written by David Roback of Mazzy Star.
On 7 February 2007, The New York Times rated Maggie Cheung as one of the 22 Great Performers in 2006 for her Cannes winning role Emily in Clean.
After 25 years of making movies, Cheung is deciding to retire from acting and pursue a career as a film composer. She allows that there might be room for an occasional comedic role, but she would like to paint and compose music, after fulfilling her acting potential.
I can’t wait to see Ang Lee’s new movie, “Se Jie” or “Lust, Caution,” an erotic spy thriller set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. More to the point, I can’t wait to see more of his new actress Wei Tang.”Lust, Caution” will be released in the U.S. on September 28, and it is much anticipated. The film just yesterday won the Golden Lion award (top prize) at the Venice Film Festival. Wei Tang herself is described in today’s New York Times (in “Breaking Through,” an article about new actors), as “the sort of deeply expressive actress who can look ordinary one moment and utterly captivating the next.” Much of the movie deals with her transformation from innocent to seductress and spy, and there are some very hot sex scenes (including “explicit sodomy,” according to some sources). In fact, the movie has an NC-17 rating. CNN says that “sources who have seen the film said it contains at least three scenes — one a long montage — featuring multiple acts of aggressive sexual activity in different positions. There’s no full-frontal male nudity (the source of some NC-17 rulings when shown in sex scenes), but male-on-female oral sex, non-S&M restraints and several nontraditional sexual positions are depicted, conveying the aggression and emotional conflict between the main characters. When asked if anyone was shown, say, upside down, one viewer said, “It depends on where you’re standing. They’re very flexible.”
Despite all the buzz, it is hard to find biographical information about Wei Tang. An article from china.org.cn reports that “she was born in 1979, in Zhejiang Province, and graduated from the directing department of the Central Academy of Drama. For her performance in the TV movie, Policewoman Yanzi, she won CCTV Movie Channel’s Lily Award for best female role.”
This is fairly old news (it happened in mid-August), but 26-year-old half-Filipina half-Irish/Italian Vanessa Minnillo and current beau Nick Lachey (of former boyband 98 Degrees) took a vacation to Mexico this summer. A paparazzo, using a long-range lens, was able to snap nude photos of the couple at their villa, having sex outdoors by the pool and hot tub.Life&Style Weekly was the first to publish the censored shots. Later, a Spanish magazine published the uncensored versions. The photos from this post come from scans of this Spanish magazine, which, in addition to the fact that the paparazzo was shooting from a distance, explains the poor image quality. I could not find the name of the publication online.
What do you think of the “real” Vanessa Minnillo? At least we know her (or Nick’s) stance on pubic hair — she’s keeping it a jungle down there!
You may remember Tamlyn Tomita from The Karate Kid, Part II (1986) as the sprightly young girl who danced with Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Maccio) in the scene above. Since then, Tamlyn has become one of the few Asian-American actresses that “remained in the game” for over two decades. See what she’s doing now.Tamlyn’s IMDB page contains 70 total entries for her acting roles. Since her acting debut in 1986, Tamlyn has played Waverly Jong in The Joy Luck Club (1993), Kana in The Picture Bride, Janet Tokada in The Day After Tomorrow (2004), and a few characters in hit televisions series such as “24,” “JAG” and “Will & Grace, “Babylon 5,” and “The Burning Zone.”
Two of those 70 acting roles include a film and a television program in post-production, meaning that 41-year-old Tamlyn is still working – a feat for any actress, moreso for an Asian actress in America.
Tamlyn (birthdate: January 27, 1966) was born on a U.S. military base in Okinawa, Japan, and raised in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. She majored in history at UCLA before pursuing acting. Tamlyn is Japanese and a quarter Filipino. She was named Queen at the Nisei Week Pageant in Los Angeles in 1984, Miss Nikkei International in 1985, and one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world by People magazine in 1991. Her NNDB page notes that she is a smoker.
One of her most recent projects was “My Life Disoriented,” which aired on PBS’ “Independent Lens” series in December 2006. It is about two high school-aged Asian-American sisters who adjust to moving to a new city, which means making new high school friends midsemester and dealing with the social pressures of being one of only a few Asians at the small Californian high school. It touches on sensitive race issues for Asian-Americans, including – as the clip below shows – a term much debated in the fora, “twinkie.”
Tamlyn plays Vivian, the girls’ aunt. Check out this dinner scene, and catch beautiful actresses Di Quon (as Kimberly), Karin Anna Cheung (as Aimee), and Hira Ambrosino (as Helen Fung, the mom) rocking the small screen:
Photos of Tamlyn are extremely difficult to find – there are very few stills of her from movies and, in spite of her People mention, she hasn’t posed in any magazines that I know of nor does she have an official website – it seems that she has purposely limited her internet presence. Below, in order: stills of her nude scene in The Killing Jar (1996), a still of her character Mary Takata in Only the Brave (2005), and a photo of her with fans (taken from the fan’s personal page):
30-year-old SuChin Pak (born August 15, 1976) is a MTV News correspondent. Joining the MTV News team in 2001, she became the first Asian face of MTV and has covered events like the MTV Video Music Awards, MTV Movie Awards, and the Sundance Film Festival.SuChin was born in Seoul, Korea and moved to Union City, California when she was five years old. She attended the University of California, Berkeley (GO BEARS!) and majored in political science while holding a job as the youngest television host for PBS’ “Newton’s Apple.”
SuChin has interviewed celebrities such as Mariah Carey, Justin Timberlake, Diddy, George Lucas, Ice-T, Billy Idol, Mary J. Blige, and Britney Spears.
SuChin is more than “just” a television host, playing a huge role in MTV’s 2004 Choose or Lose campaign which urged young people in the U.S. to vote. She also contributed segments to coverage of the aftermath of September 11 for MTV News. In May 2004, her news series titled “My Life (Translated)” aired on MTV. “My Life (Translated)” examined the difficulties of growing up as a multicultural American kid, focusing a large part on her own life and her struggles in bridging gaps between standard Korean customs/culture and American ways.
In 2007, SuChin appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and talked about how she has struggled with beauty issues, in particular the standard Asian definitions of beauty. She mentioned her epicanthal folds (which result in the absence of eye creases in Asians), and explains why having an eye crease is an important facial feature to Asians. You can see a summary of her interview here.
Personal note: I grew up watching SuChin on TRL with Carson Daly! I think she is a great role model for young people. That she graduated from UC Berkeley while working a time-consuming television host job shows that she is hardworking, and a look at any of her interviews with celebrities will show that she is very charismatic and enthusiastic about her job. She always appears cheerful on television, and she is also using her name to promote good causes. She became successful off of her smarts, not her looks – even though I think she has both. Furthermore, I love her style!
